


broken

by isoldewass



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Deal With It, F/M, it's winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 19:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14879901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldewass/pseuds/isoldewass
Summary: it’s winter outside and cold makes lonely people get closer.orLucy doesn’t clarify her relationship with Flynn to Wyatt or anyone else.





	broken

**Author's Note:**

> i swear it’s a sitcom.  
> Also, it’s winter in California or Argentina, wherever they are in s02. Deal with it. Where I am from, half of the tropes are relying on it being too cold outside.
> 
> The finale of s02 doesn't happen. As you can see, nothing really happens.

It’s logistics if nothing else. Too many lonely people per square meter. They keep stumbling onto each other.

****

Wyatt is wearing a towel on his hips, in the kitchen. He grabs a cup of water and ice cubes. It’s the middle of a winter. Ice cubes are not for the water.

Lucy keeps sitting at the kitchen table for ten minutes after he is gone, and she keeps staring at the same page.

****

She must have a future. There is a journal to prove it. There are a few pages left and she doesn’t know what to write down. She doesn’t know how to tell him what’s coming without revealing tactical advantages. She wants to tell him it wasn’t her fault.

“Knock on my door.” She puts her pen down before writing a date in it too.

It’s a gamble. All of this is a gamble. They are always running, and no one has time to consider how powerless they really are.

Lucy stares at the other copy of the same journal, the one that was completed a long time ago and handed to Flynn. She could just open it and copy the things inside. But it seems like cheating. It also seems like if she does that maybe last pages will be blank there too.

Right now is not history yet. She doesn’t have to carefully watch her steps and try not to let the boys break anything. She can just walk, eyes closed and as fast, as far as she’d like to. Even past isn’t set in stone. Present feels like fire.

There are footsteps outside. And then giggles. Her room seems to be right in the middle of the bunker. Everyone’s paths have to cross somewhere, it just so happens it’s in front of her door.

She might have drunk too much, as of right now she can’t say whether it’s Jiya or Jessica out there. The alcohol is finally, finally levelling it all up. Footsteps are just footsteps, no people attached. No trajectories to deviate from.

It’s the present, remember? She decides to go knock on his door instead.

****

"Why were you in his room?"

So, Wyatt was following her too. That, just now, that pull in her heart, felt more like a victory than it had any right to.

"We were drinking."

"And?" He expects more of an answer.

"And?" She mimics him almost playfully. But he isn’t joking, he really needs her to give him an explanation. As if she owes him one. (She feels like she does.) He has already settled on one in particular and it hurts that he would think that. That he would _choose_ that.

And? And then she thought it wasn’t too terrible to lay down and fall asleep. And it’s winter, that’s why Flynn was near. That’s why she woke up alone. Morning are warmer than nights and people don’t need other people to survive the days.

****

They come back from women’s suffrage and he still can’t let go.

“But Flynn though-“

She is so angry. Her mother would have liked how cruel she had gotten.

“And?”

****

They buy a couch.

Rufus comes up with the idea at breakfast and suddenly everyone is on board. Wyatt's arm is around Jessica's shoulders, Flynn is moving towards the stove to make himself another toast and Jiya is practically beaming with joy looking at her boyfriend. They do feel like a family.

They add up their money and ask Agent Christopher to get them furniture. “Please Mum,” whispers Jiya before bursting out laughing. She and Flynn are laughing so hard. Even Jessica smiles at Christopher and asks for an armchair. Denise looks them up and down and takes the money.

They get a single couch. It’s big and grey and it goes straight to the kitchen. The old couch goes to Wyatt’s room this week. Well, Jessica did ask for it.

“This week,” Rufus is practically threatening.

Later, Lucy asks Denise, yes, it’s Denise now, whether she could get her another bottle. The agent shakes her head and puts her hand on Lucy’s shoulder but by the end of the evening there is a new bottle in her room.

****

Speaking of broken people. Two of them are sitting on that couch.

There isn’t much to do. There isn't anything to do until there is a world to save. It's as messy as life can get.

It’s movie night apparently, because through all the noises from the room on the left they keep watching movie after movie. Lucy doesn’t know why she is sitting in the middle.

Flynn is asking himself that very same question. That’s not how couches work in Croatia. An empty seat on her left and she doesn’t use it.

She falls asleep on his shoulder. When she wakes up it’s quiet and he doesn’t know it right away. The movie credits are showing the names of the decorators of the sixth location, which just means he had been staring at white letters on the black screen chasing each other for some minutes now.

****

He is getting closer to her too.

They are having a surprisingly not awkward lunch with Agent Christopher and he is sitting on Lucy’s side of the table, their elbows brushing. It’s the sort of closeness they have now. He can sit near her and she wouldn’t even be surprised.

“Like it or not...” Lucy trails off and he finishes her sentence with “We are not getting our money back, right? You,” he points to Denise, exaggerating his movements ever so slightly, “actually took our savings, all fifty-eight dollars of it. Ever heard of a gesture?”  
When Lucy stands up to go to her room he watches her leave and Christopher watches him instead.

"Like it or not- you like her.”

He doesn’t even flinch.

She is just searching for strings to pull. Pressure points and all that, so if things get tough she could arrange any outcome. They are not her only family. And he isn’t her family at all.

****

So, he really shouldn’t pay any attention to whatever she said. She is knitting her own schemes. Nothing to read into.

But there is. There is.

****

Wyatt glances at him at lunch, and “I swear Lucy, he is getting more murdery by the hour,” Flynn says when Wyatt has disappeared to his room.

Lucy changes the topic so masterfully he only realizes she did it in the middle of the night. He can’t seem to fall asleep without her. He wonders whether she has done it before.

“Lucy,” he starts the next time they are alone, “What have you told them about us?”

****

It's not his relationship to meddle with. Wyatt doesn’t speak to him anyway. It just seems- childish. It seems like she shouldn’t have said that to Wyatt. She shouldn’t have said _that._

****

Lucy stands up from her chair and goes to lie down next to Flynn. These are small beds but there is an understanding between them.

She brings herself closer. Her hip, his knee, his arm and her back. It’s a hug of sorts, it’s also practical and comfortable. And she deserves to be comfortable. She also has a right to spend more time here than in her own room. It’s further from Wyatt’s bedroom. She almost can’t hear anything. And when she can she starts talking.

Her sister is her go-to. By now, he knows about the strawberry shampoo, gummy bears stuck to Amy’s hair at age four, Kracauer as her sociological guru and the terrifying picture of a witch in their children’s book. Those things don’t even begin to cover it. It’s all random though. She doesn’t have a pattern, she doesn’t prepare a list.

But every now and then when there is a sudden reminder in front of her she doesn’t have to get over it as quickly as she can. Now it doesn’t hurt as much. These conversations bring her sister back for a second.

“Just like Amy,” he says in 1936, looking at a kid tucking her shoelaces inside her boots. Lucy smiles. Some reminders don’t hurt at all.

****

Wyatt passes them in the corridor and it’s like he can’t handle himself anymore. Lucy stops and turns her head, ready to fight him on it. But Wyatt is already in the shower.

It’s unfair how he gets everything he wanted, yet despite promises and words of reassurance from everyone around, Amy is still gone. Wyatt gets his wife, and Lucy gets nothing, except Flynn, who Wyatt hates.

It’s not as complicated an equation as what Rufus, Connor and Jiya have to solve every day, it doesn’t come close. And if it were possible to remove the emotional coefficient it would practically solve itself.

But it hurts. It hurts to see Wyatt hate Flynn for what isn’t even happening. And above all, that Wyatt would believe it. He trusts her and mistrusts him just the right amount so that she doesn’t have to do anything to sustain his suspicions. Which are convictions by now. Which are almost truths, really.

****

"Agent Christopher should bring her wife over too-” she can’t quite finish her sentence. They are sitting on the floor near his bed and she grasps at the sheets trying to pull herself together and finish the damn joke. (His eyes are on her hand and his smile begins to disappear.)

“Then there would be a full house-” She is giggling more than she should. “Then all of us would be-” And here is when it happens, she is not laughing anymore. Her eyes find a stain on the floor and start inspecting its uneven form, calculating the diameter of an irregular shape. “Oh,” is his only reaction.

Oh. Well, first of all, they have clearly forgotten about Connor. Secondly, with that sort of mathematics, they would be stuck with each other.

Which really should seem worse than it does.

She leans in and kisses his shoulder through the shirt. He is looking at her, but that’s all her bravery allows her. That’s all any of her faculties allow her.

****

Things with Wyatt are bound to explode. They have stopped sharing information on their missions which is just plain silly and dangerous and incredibly satisfying.

It also needs repairing.

So back at the bunker he walks over to Wyatt who doesn’t put up a fight. He just says “It’s stupid,” and Flynn agrees. The next mission goes well. On the one after that everything goes to shit.

Lucy scolds them both and not one of them has an answer they are ready to share. Even Rufus looks guilty. They are a dysfunctional team and that’s on everybody.

****

Flynn doesn’t particularly try to undo anything, but he needs to contain the damage. He walks over to Wyatt again.

Things deteriorate quickly.

“You don’t know how it feels!” Wyatt yells two minutes into the conversation.

“I don’t know? I don’t know what it feels like to- to lose-” and Wyatt cuts him off, “You don’t know what it feels like to have her back!” He is fighting for something more than what was lost. He is protecting something that came _back._ Things tend to matter so much more then.

“I cannot- leave her.” Again.

Wyatt is trying to communicate this to a- well, a murderer and an entitled psychopath, completely unhinged and utterly terrible, sleeping with Lucy- yet Wyatt wants so badly for Flynn to get it. How something like this he can’t give up no matter- even if he wished he could.

He can’t allow himself to feel cheated.

He can’t allow himself a lot of things. Things that Flynn got way too easily. Like people neither of them deserves.

It really feels like both of them know exactly what he is saying.

Flynn just wants to add that nothing is happening. That Lucy and Wyatt are playing a fucked-up game. That everyone else is caught in the crossfire.

But he doesn’t.

****

Not everything about him is different or similar to Wyatt. Lucy sees things that have no relation to anything but Flynn.

He talks about his mother. The reality where she was "always sad" doesn't exist anymore. He is the only remnant of that sadness. But around Lucy he isn’t that.

There are versions of him in her mind, and she can’t seem to connect Lincoln’s murderer to a father without a family to the man in front of her, ordinary and smiling. She likes this version of him.

Lucy continues coming to his room in the evening. It’s warm, nice and she feels safe. They laugh a lot.

They move carefully around each other, having trouble to instantly fall into nearness. It’s difficult to move at all. The room is just so many square meters and they have established a proximity that at times seems overwhelming.

Then again, he has no idea how Lucy sees the situation they are in. It’s easier to not discuss what they are. Flynn doesn’t want to add up. And lately, it would seem it’s all they have been doing to each other. Not just them but everyone in the damn bunker. As if they were approaching the end of the season and had to tangle it all up before spring came.

Flynn reaches for his glass but it’s empty. He stands up to grab the bottle from the cupboard. Lucy stands up too: her legs are in his way and she wants to free the passage, but they end up facing each other in the middle of the room.

He still kind of wants that drink so he moves a step closer, now within the reach of the bottle. Lucy keeps still, her eyes on his.

If he would just lean forward he could grab the bottle and be on his way back to the chair. But he decides to wait. She seems to have settled on the same thing, standing there.

Everything happens without them moving. There is silence and not even looking at each other. But the longer they stay there the quicker she breathes. His throat is dry, and he doesn’t really want to get to the liquid. He steps even closer, leans in.  
And puts his glass on the shelf behind her. She puts a hand on his chest, her fingers light and hot.

He pulls the hem of her shirt. Her eyes follow his fingers.

“You are being accused of this on a daily basis, it's not like it's going to change…” she trails off. Except that no one but Wyatt is buying this, or even acknowledges it, or follows her movements that closely. They might notice if it becomes true.  
"I don’t give a damn about Wyatt." (It doesn’t seem worth mentioning, how screwed up his every relationship is. This one too-)

His left hand is on her wrist, his right hand is in hers.

“Last time I-” he starts. She is not sure she wants to know.

He vaguely gestures to nothing in particular and it’s enough of an explanation. They don’t need to put it into words.

“Well, my last time was back in 1941.” It’s so inappropriately funny they end up on the floor, laughing instead of fucking.

****

And then it’s easy.

It’s unfair how she wants to be quiet now. So they wouldn’t know. It’s unfair how they (he) slip into this too. How despite the separation of thin walls and the established distance Wyatt is here.

Eventually it will fade, she tells herself.

It does. It doesn’t have a lot to do with “eventually.” Flynn does something and she gets right back at him. Things become blurry and when she moans she doesn’t think about being quiet. She is. But she doesn’t think about it.

****

No one here calls him by his name. It’s not just a force of habit. It’s a fundamental truth they share: how they started, how they evolved. He was the face of all evil to them, they were ignorant strangers. (None of those categories is first-name material.) Strangers and among them a copy of a woman who knew everything.

She refuses to call him by his name too. Lucy doesn’t call him anything. She doesn’t need to: usually, it’s just the two of them. Every so often they are not talking.

****

It’s quite alarming how easily they fall into these patterns. If Wyatt was seeing something that wasn’t there then, now he must be seeing everything.

The way Lucy fixes Flynn’s collar. She only notices her own gesture after Wyatt’s turned his head away making an “are you kidding me” sound.

The way Flynn holds on to her wrist when they are trying to figure out the best approach. Him sitting down next to her and asking her what she thinks they should do. They don’t agree on a strategy, so he asks her to reconsider killing the bookshop owner. He takes her hand under the table, sitting left to her and Wyatt can’t see it, but he follows the movement intently.

It’s not new and they have done it so many times, but now when they look at each other she remembers how he bit into her shoulder and how she kissed his stomach. He remembers holding her wrist just that morning, his other hand between her legs.

****

She hears things. Whispers that have never been said, secrets that should stay silent. A heartbeat that doesn’t match hers. That one startles her. She thought they were at least meant to be in sync for this part.

Hands in sync with her wishes don’t really seem worth mentioning. After all, they have gotten good at this.

****

“Settle for me.” It was supposed to be a joke. Out loud it sounds honest.

“I mean, clearly I am a better choice.” He adds quickly, having to bury it under something else. Well, now it doesn’t feel honest enough. “I would never hurt you.”

Lucy answers instantly. “You’ve hurt me ten times over. I wouldn’t push it.”

That’s true. But then Flynn is warm and _there._ The temperature in the bunker keeps dropping even if Denise swears she’ll do something about the heating.

It’s easy to say things when they are both in bed, trying to fall asleep. It’s cruel and raw, they don’t search for words and don’t worry about consequences. They really don’t mean as much to each other as it would take to start caring about what this kind of honesty can do.

Well, Lucy thinks that. She also thinks they have too much time on their hands and she begins to be grateful for Rittenhouse’s trips. She feels stuck. It falls into place way too easily and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

"You've hurt everyone."

There is nothing Flynn can say to that. He doesn't really understand why she treats him as if he were a good man. It's not what he is. It's a part of him maybe, made mostly of remnants of his past.

****

“Looks like things are good.”

He waits for her to come into his room. Their plans to watch a movie have been hijacked by another set of two watching something. Well, watching. Wyatt is sitting on the couch with Jessica, her legs in his lap. The movie is quiet, the language is foreign, subtitles are off. They are not even trying.

Lucy doesn’t turn the corner, stops mid-step and watches them. Flynn bumps into her and she still doesn’t move. All she sees are his long fingers tracing lines on Jessica’s bare legs.

She takes Flynn’s hand and he leads her back to their usual space, waits for her to come in.

“It seems to be working out between the two of them.” Just yesterday they heard screams coming from their room. Lucy drew closer to him then and buried her face against his shoulder. As if she was scared.

She is scared now too.

The sight of them. Jessica’s lazy smile. (She knows why. She knows how he can look at you. She felt adored too. Back in 1941. And in 1955. And in 1934.)

It startled her that she stopped. It scared her that it was all it took to untangle the knots in her stomach. To unbury all she tried so hard to tear from herself.

To undo whatever she has been doing to get over him. Apparently, moving on is not about moving towards the next thing.

She has to let _Wyatt_ go. Flynn is not even part of the equation.

So, she asks for advice from someone who seems good at it. “You are good at giving up, aren’t you?”

Flynn doesn’t catch on. She explains.

****

Flynn contradicts everyone except her. If it were anyone else, he would have ignored it or refuted the statement and started a fight. But in her words, he looks for the truth. He trusts she knows better. He trusts she knows best. It might have a lot to do with the fact that one day she will know everything. For a while, that was all she was.

Knowing her, living alongside her, existing in the same space and being _welcome_ to share it, he sees she may not- She is flawed too. And it only ever makes her real. Despite her mistakes, she is kind, strong, open. Worth listening to and fighting for.

He hears her when she says “You’ve abandoned your quest.” She doesn’t say those exact words. (She certainly doesn't call it a quest.) She goes around it and lingers on certain things, but he has learned to read her honesty.  
“You have a time machine and a name and- most importantly, you have our trust. Why don’t you go there and change things?”

“Because-” he can’t say the rest. He has practically interrupted her, the answer burning his tongue, slipping through his teeth.

He was a handed a key to the future and it still didn't help. He thought if she gave it to him he had to succeed. A journal only goes this far. Eventually, he ran out of present. And nothing. So he had to sit down and reconsider. When Agent Christopher showed up he still didn’t feel like helping. But he owed one of them.

Again, she gave him purpose. A life.

He can’t quite manage to tell that there is no moving on. That really, people who care about each other don’t move on at all. And she and Wyatt care.

Also, it might not even be true. What does Flynn know, he never really tried. He always fought. He can’t tell her he has only now stopped, because of her.

They have practiced honesty enough for him to know what would hurt her. And enough for Flynn to know what would hurt him. None of this is something he wants to say out loud. She doesn’t ask again.

****  
Wyatt seems off, dragging his spoon to the middle of the plate and back towards the edges. The noise ripples off the walls but he doesn’t notice.

Because Lucy does know him pretty well she can see truths he won’t acknowledge. He isn’t gloriously happy anymore.

Lucy watches him closely. Sometimes she has an urge to punch him in the face for toying with everything he has.

But he must have his reasons. If he is willing to continue being a little unhappy with Jessica, it’s his choice. And she is trying so hard to respect it.

Jessica leans in and whispers something to Wyatt, glances at Lucy at the same time. Giggles, wipes her mouth with her hand and pushes the plate away. Leans into Wyatt again, and says something again, her eyes at Lucy the entire time.

She feels uncomfortable in her skin, laughed upon. It’s probably nothing though. But then Wyatt smiles and looks at her too.

Lucy reaches under the table to grasp Flynn’s hand, and the moment her fingers find his, he _flinches._

Lucy is sure she isn't the only one who noticed. Denise almost reaches for the gun and Rufus moves closer to Jiya. They still have their reflexes against the enemy he used to be.

Beyond the sting of a personal rejection, she can’t believe he’d ever do that. Get away like it wasn’t her.

Like she wasn’t herself.

In the corridor they cross paths again. He is still distant, and it riles her up. Just like Wyatt used to.

She wonders whether Flynn is adopting qualities from a man she came very, very close to loving or whether it’s her, noticing and getting frustrated because of it.

Some things have definitely shifted.

She asks him what went wrong.

“You are excusing him.” It looks like to him it’s the worst thing she could be doing.

“He hates you for us and there is a woman on his shoulder at any given moment!”

There is truth to his statement but, well, she already knows all of this. She knows, she cares, but it’s not enough.

“His wife. His wife, Lucy.” It’s not just some word to him. To him, it’s everything that’s missing. And Wyatt has it, and chooses it, and it is not enough. (And if it’s not enough for Wyatt than maybe it would not be enough for him either-)

And even Lucy can’t help but feel angry. Flynn is still talking.

“And, and he chooses to be with her, yet he hates me, and he resents you- and he is jealous of you- and you, you try so hard not to be jealous of him, it’s-”

The word he wants so badly not to say is “ridiculous."

It’s almost as ridiculous as him in her bed, stuck in her unresolved tension with Wyatt. Almost as ridiculous as him holding on to whatever this is and beating himself up for ruining it with every word.

“Love of your life or not, you sh-”

Lucy cuts him off.

“Love of m- No.” She shakes her head so many times her neck hurts a bit. “No, Flynn.”

He can’t be the love of her life. “Things need to happen for that to become true. And I didn’t get those things.”

The fight could have been over then. Everything could return to its place. But she hurts, and she’s done with silence.

“To me it didn’t happen,” she takes a breath, “and to him it’s happening right now.” She is angry. She is saying it like it’s the truth Flynn should be smart enough to realize on his own.

“You are the only one who can grieve.”

That one hurts. That she would take his pain and make a good thing out of it. An argument out of his tragedy. Her mother would have liked how cruel she had gotten.

He closes his eyes and leans against the wall.

They stay like that for a while, yet she can’t bring herself to regret her words. And it’s not like he waits for her to do it. He just leaves then, and she finds herself alone with nowhere to go. Jiya is in Lucy’s room. Her fight with Rufus brought her there in the middle of the night.

Things are going to mend between them soon enough, it’s temporary.

Maybe her suffering is temporary too. It might dissipate in a while.

And that’s when she gets that she is not broken forever. Not like they are. Rittenhouse’s blood and Wyatt’s family aside, she is not damaged. Just hurting. And she'd like to stop.

There is a flicker of a thought in her mind, so fast she wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t about to change her life.

She thinks it might get easier if they aren’t sharing the same space.

****

It doesn’t feel like a revolution at first. She looks at her clothes and thinks she never really liked that one shirt. She takes the backpack Denise has once brought them food in. She puts another shirt, the one she loves to pieces, in the backpack. It’s nothing. Simple gestures.

****

What’s not easy is walking out of the door. She would have to talk to Denise. Not to mention finding a place safe enough for her not to look over her shoulder. She supposes she’d figure it out once she is out of the bunker.

She supposes, there are possibilities of her making one choice and waking up the next day having made a different one. History changes so much around here, it’s hard to follow. What remains becomes that much more fragile.

Everything could disappear in a moment. The very next day, it does.

****

Jessica is Rittenhouse and Lucy still wants to leave.

****

Lucy looks around her and from Flynn’s bruised chest to Wyatt’s hurt knee there is so much that is happening. Jiya and Rufus figuring it out and being better at it than anyone thought would be possible stuck in a bunker. Connor compromising his ideals, Denise opening up. Jessica being gone. There is so much to fight for, to heal, to discover in this limited space with all these people.

But not so much left of her.

She feels she has been losing parts of herself. And maybe they are lost somewhere in between eras, maybe they are still in Wyatt’s skin, maybe she has written them down tracing lines on his body. Maybe- maybe they are scattered across empty bottles under Flynn’s bed. Maybe that’s where she has lost most of herself.

Whatever’s true, Lucy wants to leave the bunker. To construct her life anew, at least a little of it. At least for a while.

Rittenhouse hasn’t made a trip in three weeks which feels like an eternity of going down various corridors all leading to different outcomes.

She feels stuck in those outcomes. Nothing really happens here.

****

Giving him up should be easy. Yet she is standing there by the door, about to leave the room and she struggles. It’s annoying and unfair. And true. She looks at him, tilts her head and he walks over to her and kisses her neck, shoulder, collarbones. She puts her hand on his chest and he halts. Pulls away, looks at her.

It’s like he knows. “You know?”

There is emptiness in his eyes, something he never displays when around her. He looks sad.

They are both missing people in front of them. She closes the distance, trying to ease the pain but it would seem the emptiness has left his eyes and settled around them. She puts her hand on him, another one on his back, he grunts, and her hips push into his. Yet it feels like they are far away.

There are things that need to be put into words.

“I’m sorry, you-” “Oh, I know it’s not about me.” He sits down on the bed. “It’s never about me with you.”

Lucy wants to sit down next to him, put her arms around him. Calm them both down.

“It’s not like I am mistaken about the- nature of this arrangement.”

How dare he. “How dare you.”

But he just looks hurt. And it doesn’t have the right to hurt this much.

If it hurts, it’s real. And she knows he can’t accept that.

“We don’t choose who we love." Flynn is not going to say it, but he allows her to say it for him.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have chosen you."

That hurts and she lets it show, he catches on pretty quickly, sighs and says:

"Because you are leaving." Now he is the one explaining things she should have known. He is almost tired of explaining these truths to her. And as she looks at him there is a part of her that cannot remember why leaving ever seemed like a good idea. Not because everything else suddenly seems unimportant or even bearable. But because he is here. And at some point, it should be enough of a reason.

“Don’t just look sad. Fight me on this.”

“I’m not going to fight you.” The answer comes too fast, and she has to dig in.

“Why?” Her voice breaks on the one syllable.

“Because that’s not what we are.”

****

The step by step approach settles back in. She promises she’ll be in check and careful. Careful involves hiring security and not giving any public presentations. Careful means eventually coming back.

Lucy settles on a date. They all come to the main room to say their version of “Be careful,” varying from “Are you sure?” to “I am going to miss you.”

Flynn stands there, inseparable from the rest of them and she wants to kiss him goodbye, but they had theirs.

He follows her to the bunker’s door.

“Please.” It’s quiet and when she turns to him he looks surprised she had heard anything. She watches him closely and he watches the floor.

“Find me.”

It’s a plea and hope and he shouldn’t have saved it for now. Not in front of them.

“I promise.” She says it with so much ease, it’s such a simple thing to consider. He tilts his head and bites his lip and she has to add a “Don’t doubt me,” to reassure him.

“Oh yeah?” He starts, aiming for humor and missing the target, “Because you wouldn’t have traded it for anything?”

She frowns at him and it would be condescending if she was capable of being that. But it’s pity. As if she were saying “If you don’t know by now that I will find you-” And here she is, saying just that. Like it’s a given. Like it’s something they have established along the way. “-than what even is this?”

There are a lot of things she is sure that are better than what they all have. But this present, as any other she’s been part of is ours. Not perfect. “Ours.” And it means something to a historian.

It’s a hell of an answer to her but means little to him.

She wants to close the gap, make him understand. But looking into his eyes, she can’t. He is still searching for a reason not to feel, not to be. Up close he seems good. Up close he almost doesn’t seem dangerous. He puts his arms around her, trying to maintain the contact. She pulls him closer, puts her head on his chest.

And stays.

****

It doesn’t feel big. That’s because it’s not a revelation.

“What’s going to happen now?” he asks her quietly. There are people behind them, still expecting her to open the door.

“I don’t know.” Lucy wants to say it again and again. She wants to revel in the uncertainty.

“You always know.”

“ _You_ always know.”

****

She stays. As much as she wants to go she also really doesn’t.

So he tugs her closer as she puts her lips on his. Wyatt gets out of the common space and an echo tells her he’s punched the wall. Denise coughs, Jiya doesn’t have a visible reaction.

No one says a word to Lucy about how she had moved out only to not cross the threshold. This is her home too.

****

It’s not good enough for a long-term solution. But it should sustain itself for a while.  


**Author's Note:**

> glad you are here. 
> 
> The couch thing happened to me in real life. Yes, it does feel like a big deal.


End file.
